From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3be76ca884705a45 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!17g2000prr.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: John McCormick Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities? Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 06:22:07 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.212.111.21 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1300022527 16295 127.0.0.1 (13 Mar 2011 13:22:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 13:22:07 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: 17g2000prr.googlegroups.com; posting-host=67.212.111.21; posting-account=jVm7MAoAAABZ69ylB7L9PjZAVQg4j4fC User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; MDDC; .NET4.0C; InfoPath.3),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:19107 Date: 2011-03-13T06:22:07-07:00 List-Id: On Mar 11, 8:33=A0pm, "Nasser M. Abbasi" wrote: > I made a survey of text books today at my university book store, > and I could not find a single book on Ada (nor on Fortran for that matter= ). > > --Nasser Ada is still being used for teaching. A couple of pieces of evidence: There are around 120 schools participating in the GAP (GNAT Academic Program) sponsored by AdaCore. In 2010 I had a banner year in sales of my two Freshman level Ada textbooks (Intro to Programming and Data Structures). You won't find any Ada textbooks at college book stores where it is not required for a particular course. Currently C++, Java, and increasingly Python are the major languages used in Freshman courses. I'm finding students in my upper level courses who started out in Python haven't a clue about arrays. Another classic "low level" language feature bites the dust replaced by dynamic data structures from massive libraries. I have just returned from the ACM SIGCSE (Special Interest Group for Computer Science Education) where SIGAda has a booth in the exhibit hall. Amazing how many people stop by to say how they would love to teach Ada to beginners but that the students would revolt if they did not teach one of the popular three languages. I think we are the only discipline in which the content of Freahman courses is determined by the "want ads". John John